“Project: Tomaszewski” is actually a treatise on freedom. When I began working on the performance I knew I had to face my artistic Creator and Father. I knew I had to commit a kind of murder on the One whom I love most, and to whom I owe the most. It was my kind of a call for my freedom in making myself, cutting the umbilical cord. With this performance I told my story, as an already grown-up child which leaves his home. I left… “And now we gotta take some time get to know each other our whole lives. And I call on you to remind nothing’s really mine except for freedom, freedom en meu coracao. I’d like to live that way I’d wanna stay stay that way”(Devendra Banhart).

In my performance I turned to my first steps onstage which were unconsciously directed by the Master. In 1989 I became part of the Wroclaw Mime Theatre by accident. It was pure luck and I had to revisit all of my plans for life. Tomaszewski treated me with care and made me who I am now. Despite the fact that I left his theatre after just one season, I stayed in touch for many following years, often paying him a visit iat his home in Karpacz. I listened and I talked. I was not His artist, but I felt like I was. He gave me this possibility, I was able to spend time with the Master, to absorb and admire him. I was born as an artist at the Mekka Sztuki on Dębowa Street in Wrocław and in Karpacz, a magical, incredible and unforgettable place.

Tomaszewski said:

“We are facing a void, nothing(ness)… And our only aim is the constant quest. A man can believe in his ideas and hope to fulfil them as long as he keeps creating; as long as he remains an artist. If we deny every idea the right to develop, we will never find hope. Because despite all defeats and disasters, a man gains experience, knowledge, first of all knowledge about himself, he creates his own Holy Graal… he simply lives, lives with some ideas. And I think that creation and bringing ideas into life, even ideas that are so honourable that they become utopian, is the only way to remain hopeful…”

// Mikołaj Mikołajczyk – dancer, choreographer, director. He graduated from the State Ballet School in Poznan, studied Sociology and History of Art at the Adam Mickiewicz University, worked at numerous Polish and foreign theatres, the Henryk Tomaszewski Wroclaw Mime Theatre among others. He collaborated with many artists creating ballet as well as dramatic performances. He is the author of the monodrama entitled “Triptych” (…), a series of three full performances – Waiting, I Want to See the World with You, Palisir’Damour. He often works as a choreographer at dramatic theatres and opera houses, where he collaborates with top Polish directors. www.mikołaj-mikołajczyk.pl

// Henryk Tomaszewski (1919-2001) – dancer, mime artist, choreographer, director, teacher, founder and director of the Wroclaw Mime Theatre. He graduated from the Iwo Gall Dramatic Studio. He collaborated with Polish Academic Theatre and the Wroclaw Opera. He directed for theatres in Sweden, Norway, West Germany and at the Italian La Scala. For Henryk Tomaszewski movement was the affirmation of life, extension of our existence, which can generalise it and sum it up at the same time. Perceiving contemporary art as an example of devaluation of the word, a crisis of the representative function of the language which give way to its phatic and symbolic functions, he sees movement as the possibility to omit the sensitivity of the world and a chance to convey what “(…) the word fears to represent.” Henryk Tomaszewski’s pantomime is a significant modification of traditional pantomime. He introduced teamwork, symbolic and abstract usage of the world, distancing oneself from the mimesis in favour of conveying the states and inner processes of the characters.

RE// MIX

Curator: Magda Grudzińska

Idea of the series: Tomasz Plata

Remix is a term borrowed from music: it means a piece created as a result of processing of another song. It is not simply an “interpretation”, presenting the original with new means of expression or in new arrangement. While it may contain fragments from the original (called samples), they are only quotations. The remix is a new piece, which refers to the content or form of the original. Makers of remixes argue with their masters, recall them nostalgically or re-read.

The RE//MIX series has been started in 2010; it consists of première productions which refer to classic pieces, mainly from the field of theatre and dance, but also from literature and film. The originals, some of them already slightly forgotten, have once changed the consciousness of people who today are involved in “strange” theater – an interdisciplinary, seeking one, which sits at the border between the visual theatre, performance art, fine arts and social activities. They form a kind of cultural canon, determine taste and style; they are a self-definition of owns sources and inspirations – points of reference.